Bande Dessinée: Thinking Outside the Boxes

The latest installment of Yale French Studies explores the history and development of bande dessinée, Franco-Belgian comics

This special issue of Yale French Studies on bande dessinée is a multifaceted reflection on its newfound academic status. It goes beyond the question, settled long ago, of its artistic legitimacy but aims to think "outside the boxes," or cases, themselves in order to explore the mutually enriching relationship between BD and the wider francophone cultural and intellectual world. Contributions thus intersect with art history, literary theory, cinema studies, postcolonialism, semiotics, and political sociology. Articles are by mainstream interdisciplinary scholars applying themselves to BD, leading authorities on bande dessinée itself, BD artists, and key figures in contemporary French thought whose texts appear in English for the first time.

Laurence Grove is president of the International Bande Dessinée Society and director of the Stirling Maxwell Center for the Study of Text/Image Cultures at the University of Glasgow. Michael Syrotinski is Marshall Professor of French at the University of Glasgow.